we couldn’t leave him why
asked the ones who walked ahead
whispered they’d heard coyotes fake they’re hurt
circle and circle so much they make it seem they tried
but all they did was steal money
I don’t know
his ankle was swollen he was feverish
it’s true
the sun’s heat was a reptile but I know
if we hadn’t left him we’d still be
run-over toads
I.
I didn’t recognize Dad
different from pictures
he remembers the smell
shit piss dust in your hair
he says now
crying
Mom had a bag with Nikes
Levi’s Star Wars
Episode One shirt
I left my ripped clothes
inside a Ross fitting room
I’m tired of writing the fence the desert
the van picked us up
took me to parents
I’m tired it’s always that
even now outside United Airlines 18F
I see clouds first like quilt
then like cheese
melting in a plastic bag
under creosotes
next to those empty
gallons of water
I.
Mom didn’t know
Dad didn’t know
even if they’d run across fences before
they didn’t see my knees
crashing into cactus needles
that night one shoe slipped off
she says Coyote said
I’ll carry him to your front door myself Pati
she didn’t know 110 degrees
when like Colorado River toads
we slid under bushes
officers yelled
on your fucking knees
you couldn’t have known this could happen
Mom
you couldn’t have
no es su culpa
no lo es
I.
javier here you go
about same shit
when will your status change
when will you stop
not being that June 10
let it go man
you’re not inside that Tucson fitting room
this is not Abuelita
who you couldn’t call
those eight weeks she lit a candle every night
to light your path
Abuelita who you can’t call
every two weeks
you can’t even tell her la quiero
la quiero mucho
only here in a language
she don’t speak
I.
I left Grandpa in Guatemala
for eight weeks no one heard my voice
for eight weeks
no one slept
twice parents packed the car said
I’m going to the border
then at 1 a.m.
someone called said
you the parent of javier nine years old
from El Salvador
yes
órale
it’s gone be fifteen hundred
cash
can you get to Tucson
tomorrow
yes
órale
near Phoenix
call this number
I.
to write I look for words in books
little ants Abuelita calls words
right now it’s bonsai
that makes me think father
he made the one in a black pot in the first living-room I saw
in this country
correction first furnished living-room in this country
my first dawn here I spent it dreaming
about what furniture should be where
on that living-room carpet used as coyote warehouse
in some Tucson suburb
the smell of all fifty of us who waited for family
to pay so we could take different vans
to different states
in that ceiling’s white bumpy surface
I imagined a movie I wanted to see
Mi Vida Gringa
I was ready to be gringo
speak English
own a pool
Jeep convertible
I.
Abuelita won’t leave the house
hasn’t left in years
hasn’t will not
leave
no bullshit
no metaphor
she won’t shower
won’t walk to the market
pero they’ll talk
what will they say
she says
who is they
and who cares
we say through the phone
on the table
by her door
we’ve all walked out of
her hair knots a dread
in the back of her short hair
like a microphone head
cousin says
my little microphone head
won’t shower
won’t sit on a chair
watching people walk by
like she did
when we were there
I.
I wasn’t born here
I’ve always known this country wanted me dead
do you believe me when I say more than once
a white man wanted me dead
a white man passed a bill that wants me deported
wants my family deported
a white man a white man a white man
not the song I wanted to hear
driving to the airport today
the road the trees the signs the sky the cars the walls the lights
told me we want you
out out out out
I.
a few hours ago I boarded a plane
tried to cut ahead with Group A
usually I’m not caught I was stopped
the flight attendant told me wait
it’s not your turn I started sweating
I wore white the worst
color for sweat my back drenched
until she let me through I was
in the gate in the plane 18F
when I got to SFO
I took Marin Airporter to San Rafael
same bus I took when I first saw
the Golden Gate
I’d never dreamed of it then
waiting in that line at the US embassy
when I tried and tried for a visa
like Mom like Dad like aunts
and we all got denied
I.
in public again writing at the corner
so people can’t see line breaks
so they think I’m essayist
maybe I’m ashamed
maybe I don’t want them reading this
that was not part of Mi Vida Gringa
Mi Vida Gringa not the movie I paid to see then
on that ceiling
but I still haven’t exited in protest
haven’t been kicked out
for not having a valid ticket
I sneaked in bought the popcorn drank the Coke
bonsai the word stuck in my brain
Dad a landscaper Mom a babysitter
I was supposed to be lawyer
businessman soccer player
Mom and Dad said
someone of value
I.
javier can you think of that date
without almost pissing yourself in La Migra’s backseat
and in front of you people running
fast as we could
now I walk toward dawn
only when I’m fucked up
and if I’m blacked out
I want to shut the fuck up
those brown strangers
who didn’t listen and
ran
from Migra guns
but now in San Francisco
I’m half-drunk at 8 a.m.
stuffing shirts pants socks
into my carry-on
as if I had a flight today
I’ve carried this since that day
I’m talking about the flor de izote in our fence
the one Abuelita plucked
mixed with eggs that dawn she was crying
I didn’t know why
come out come out of the house Abuelita
please
I’m soft I’m soft Grandpa says
who to this day goes out with his bad knee
to the fields and scrapes the grass
hunching down raking to blast the leaves on fire
and what do I do
I sit here type it’s Monday
it’s Tuesday it’s Friday
type first day inside a plane I sat by the window
everyone’s working
Mom Dad Tía Lupe Tía Mali
working under different names
I sit here writing our names
the TV is on
coffee is on
the couch is soft
my throat is dry
and sick and still
nothing has changed
About the Author
Javier Zamora was born in La Herradura, El Salvador, in 1990. He holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied and taught in June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program. Zamora earned an MFA from New York University and is currently a 2016–2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. He is the recipient of scholarships to the Bread Loaf, Frost Place, Napa Valley, Squaw Valley, and VONA writers’ conferences and fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University (Olive B. O’Connor), MacDowell Colony, Macondo Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Saltonstall Foundation, and Yaddo. In 2016, Barnes & Noble granted him the Writer for Writers Award for his work with the Undocupoets Campaign. He was also the winner of the Ruth Lilly/Dorothy Sargent Fellowship and is a member of the Our Parents’ Bones Campaign, whose goal is to bring justice to the families of the ten thousand dis-appeared during El Salvador’s civil war. You can learn more about it www.ourparentsbones.org.
Also by Javier Zamora
Nueve años inmigrantes / Nine Immigrant Years (chapbook)
Acknowledgments
Gracias Abuelita Neli por ser mi madre desde que nací, pero especial-mente durante mis primeros nueve años. Abuelo, gracias por dejar de tomar cuando mi mamá se fue.
Gracias Papá Javi por su apoyo, siempre. Mamá Pati, usted es un gran ejemplo de una mujer fuerte y luchadora, gracias por todos sus esfuerzos.
Tía Mali y Tía Lupe, gracias por ser mis hermanas mayores, por cuidarme esos años, por las conversaciones.
Julia, que con este libro nos tengás más cerca, tan cerca como quisiéramos estar de vos.
Toñito y Adriana, que este libro les sirva a entender algunas cosas.
Gracias familia, que sin su apoyo, sus esfuerzos, sus risas, sus historias, pero principalmente, su amor, estas páginas no existieran. Los quiero mucho y perdón si algunos días han llegado a dudar de mi amor.
Monica Sok, gracias mi Ocelota for coming into my life, for the walks, the red string, your love.
To my CantoMundo and Macondo familia, sincere thank you for holding space, for your tears, for your laughter, and warmth.
To Becky for helping me apply to Breadloaf, Napa Valley, Squaw
Valley, and VONA. Thank you to these workshops, where the seeds for this book were first planted. Gracias Willie Perdomo for the advice, the realness, and your work.
To Rigoberto Gonzalez and Eduardo Corral for your light that contin-ues to provide that extra push I need, this book would not be possible without you.
Thanks to Yusef Komunyakaa, Deborah Landau, Sharon Olds, and Brenda Shaughnessy, who helped me with the early stages of this manuscript. To Major Jackson and Marie Howe for your brilliance. Thank you NYU.
To Louise Glück and Michael Wiegers for helping me in the final stages: your eyes were desperately needed, thank you.
To Peter Balakian, Casa Latina (Cristina, Denise, Anna), Chelsea, and everyone at Colgate who provided community in that coldest of win-ters, thank you.
To the Aninstantia Foundation, MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Foundation, Saltonstall Founda-tion, and Yaddo, for time and support.
Thank you to Eavan Boland and the cohort at the Wallace Stegner program for the workshops in which the last poems in this book were shaped.
A huge thank you to the editors of the publications in which some of these poems first appeared as is, or in earlier versions: AGNI, American Poetry Review, Borderlands, Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, CONSEQUENCE Magazine, Day One, Diario Co Latino, elfaro, FENCE, Four Way Review, Gulf Coast, Granta, Huizache, Indiana Review, Kenyon Review, Meridian, NACLA, Narrative Magazine, New England Review, Ninth Letter, Notre Dame Review, PEN America Online, Ploughshares, Poetry Magazine, New Republic, New York Times, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, and Washington Square Review.
Thank you to the following anthologies in which some of these poems appear:
Best New Poets 2013: 50 Poems from Emerging Writers
Ghost Fishing: An Eco Justice Poetry Anthology
Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America
The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States
Theatre under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry/Teatro bajo mi piel: poesía salva-doreña contemporanea
Gracias all of you who’ve believed in me, who’ve shared memories, who’ve shared bread, un millón de gracias.
Finalmente, abrazos a todos los inmigrantes en todo el mundo, I believe in you.
Copyright 2017 by Javier Zamora
All rights reserved
Cover art: Photograph © Tomás Castelazo, www.tomascastelazo.com / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0
ISBN: 978-1-55659-511-0
eISBN: 978-1-61932-177-9
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LANNAN LITERARY SELECTIONS 2017
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Ghassan Zaqtan (translated by Fady Joudah), The Silence That Remains
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Unaccompanied Page 5